Music has disappeared from my sd-card. Where could it be?

A

AC Question

Music has disappeared from my sd-card.

No warning no reason, 5 full (music) albums or maybe more have just completely disappeared from my sd-card, i noticed because one of the tracks was my ringtone, another was my alarm clock tune. I can't access the files on my pc either, all i can see is empty playlists and empty folders of where the music used to be stored.

Mind you i'm not asking how to resolve this problem and get my music back, I just want to know, how do i prevent this from happening in the future?
Perhaps I should just get a new SD-card?

There's only one program i frequently use to clean my phone is cleanmaster, I have used this program for months without any trouble, so i think its highly unlikely that its causing the issue.


Thanks for any help in advance!
 

B. Diddy

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Re: Music has disappeared from my sd-card.

Welcome to Android Central! Which phone? SD cards are a bit notorious for unexpected data loss--seemingly more frequently on Samsung devices, although this might be more of a function of how most devices with SD card slots are Samsungs. The main things I would suggest are (1) make sure you buy good brands of SD cards (like Sandisk) from reputable stores (and not from random sellers on eBay), and (2) always make sure you Unmount a card (in Settings>Storage​) before removing it.
 

Rukbat

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Re: Music has disappeared from my sd-card.

Try PhotoRec (instructions at PhotoRec Step By Step). If the files still exist on the card, even if their directory entries are gone, PhotoRec will find them. (It'll also find every other file that's ever been on the card so give it a hard drive with as much free space as the card size, in case it finds thousands of files.) You'll lose the file name (but there are Windows programs and Android apps that can read the metadata on the files and give you the track, artist and album, so you can rename the files. They initially get generic names with the correct extension - mp3, jpg, whatever they were.

If PhotoRec doesn't find the files, they're not there.

Also, run SD Insight and see if the card really is what it says. Counterfeiters use 4GB cards (they can't get 2GB cards any more) and reprogram them to claim that they're 64GB or 128GB, and print an excellent counterfeit of the manufacturer's label. (Even the packaging looks authentic, since it's produced from a photo of a real package.) But if you put 4GB on a 4GB card, then try to add a file, the card "goes bad" - because the new file got saved all over the directory. (Check the manufacture date - 1/1/1970 is a giveaway - it's 0 in Unix timestamp, and some counterfeiters forget to change that to something realistic. We didn't have SD card technology in 1970.)
 

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